


Absolution

by CommanderInChief



Category: Holby City
Genre: Masturbation, Mid-life Sapphism, Multi, Smut
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-01
Updated: 2018-08-01
Packaged: 2019-06-20 01:17:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,502
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15522879
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CommanderInChief/pseuds/CommanderInChief
Summary: Roxanna has a problem...





	Absolution

**Author's Note:**

> A bit thank you to @theseventeenstairs for Beta-ing this for me... because I *totally* know how to write smut.

For all intents and purposes, Roxanna MacMillian was doing okay. No,  _ really _ . She has a therapist- a short man in his thirties who wasn’t afraid to ask her when she last ate something green. She has work, albeit on John’s terms. She’s even sleeping, mostly, and her bedroom is the tidiest it’s been since the days when Henrik would barge into her dorm with a black bag and de-gunge it for her.

In the wondrous world of new-found singleness, there is just one, teeny, tiny problem.

It started small, minor blips of concentration. Phasing out in the pharmacy isle in Sainsbury’s. Missing her name whilst skimming through a rubbish paper in the Dentist’s waiting room. Realising only too late that half of her soggy custard cream is lost forever to an over stewed cup of tea.

Of course, the darkest form of despair is when you don’t know that you’re in it, and by the time that Roxanna caught her eyes lingering on Henrik’s backside after a lunch chat, she was already neck-deep.

Then, the dreams. Fleeting ones that she can’t even remember. Waking up at two in the morning, pyjamas stuck to her skin with sweat, and so sensitive that the smallest fingertip is overwhelming, it feels oddly like being haunted.

Several weeks into this and even her colleagues start to twig that something is off. Consultants’ meetings become emails. The anaesthetists look scared. She’s fairly certain that she saw Nicky take one look at her on the Darwin corridor and dive into the men’s loos for safety.

She’s frustrated so she can’t sleep. She can’t sleep so she can’t distract herself with work. She has nothing on her mind and it makes the frustration worse. It’s a vicious cycle.

So it’s for the greater good,  really, that she flicks through her calendar, takes a deep breath, and puts a messy red circle around the box for three day’s time. 

For those seventy two hours, she is a woman on a mission: the clothes are picked from her bedroom floor, the bed linen changed for new, carpets hoovered, windows cleaned. Then, when she can’t find anything else that needs cleaning, she takes to her laptop. With tingles of excitement, she plunges into online shopping. Candles with flavours like ‘Sandalwood’ or ‘Birthday cake’. Silky men’s pyjamas. An expensive bottle of white wine that she can almost justify drinking.

Like preparing for a date, except the only person she has to seduce is herself.

It sounds simple.

‘Sounds’.

Because, the thing is, when you’re on a date with another person, there’s a driving force. You take it in turns pushing each other that little bit further until you both get what you want.

Turns out that when you’re lying in bed on your own, under the judgemental eye of a half empty bottle of wine on the table, it is entirely possible for nothing to happen. She could pick up her phone: play a game of candy crush or scroll through Facebook or finish that article in the lancet about contamination in implants purchased from abroad.

It’s the thought of having to redo all of that cleaning that stops her from turning back.

So, she leans back, puts her eyes on the ceiling and tries not to put too much thought into whether she could now be classified as mildly tachycardic.

“It’s just a wank,” She muttered to herself, “Everyone does it.” 

It’s too quiet, but making a Spotify playlist is a step too far, even for her. And as for the radio… well… does anyone really want to run the risk of doing  _ that  _ just as Chris Evans comes in at the background.

Honestly, she pitied the man’s wife.

Though, right now, those feelings could wait. Now or never.

She starts off slow. Her hands are flat to the mattress on either side of her hips. Years ago, this bit had been easy. Think of shared showers or cold Sunday mornings or that tickle fight that turned to making love on the floor of their first shared apartment.

They don’t work now. David’s body made her think of David’s face and his smile and his laugh and the taste of his favourite flavour of ice cream on his tongue.

Grief floats up in an ever expanding bubble, bigger and bigger.

Rum and Raisin. 

She can almost taste it as she swallows and she hates,  _ hates it _ .

How dare he leave her like this, with his messy fingerprints painted onto everywhere he went, everything he loved. Fuck the top floor of the Statue of liberty for being where he first kissed her. Fuck Sainsbury's for putting his favourite chocolate bar on the shelves. Fuck sky itself for looking the same as it did when he was still here to be underneath it.

And fuck him. Fuck him for leaving her with this feeling of wanting.

Fuck her body for not listening when she tells it that he’s gone.

She turns onto her front with a groan. A proper one. Sound comes out of her and doesn’t stop until her face is red and toes curled. No housemate to wake. No neighbours to think she’s being murdered. She surfaces to take a gulp of air in then yells it straight back out. Almost as though the air were flushing the system. John’s right, no science behind it. No logic.

It takes a woman of science to know when to accept things for face value.

Flopping onto her back, some of the tightness in her chest is gone. The dark fingers of dread fade to the edges of her mind, where they still stay for as long as they are undisturbed.

Maybe she really does need something else to occupy her mind.

That something doesn’t have to be unlatching the button on her jeans but she’s come this far already.

Just the action of it could do the job, surely? The body is built for this. Perhaps Menopause might have thrown a bit of a spanner in the works in terms of getting started, but there’s life in the old dog yet.

_ Don’t think, just do. _

With that idea spinning around and around and around, she finally steels the courage. One hand is slipped into the front of her jeans. With a silent curse to whatever self righteous agony aunt came up with the idea of journey over destination, she finds her clit and presses down.

Hard.

Feeling bursts up like static shocks. Her hips lift up into her touch. A noise bounces through the room but Roxanna thinks that it couldn’t possibly have come from her. It’s not been that long, has it?

It’d always been a regular occasion, their Wednesday nights. Drives out to the seaside, night-time picnics, staying in posh hotels just for the sake of loving each other somewhere new. Only problem with Wednesdays is when your husband forgets how to read a calendar. You’d have three, all in a row, then a month of monotonous Mondays and Tuesdays. Then, came the eventful day when she took out for a meal only to watch him fall apart in front of the waiter: he couldn’t remember the word for fork. They never had a Wednesday again. 

The closest they came after that was probably their wedding anniversary. Or rather, the morning after, when her husband of thirty years had got up to make her breakfast then asked with a sly smile if maybe he could have her phone number.

No, she thinks desperately, heart rate slowing. Her index finger irritates the skin that it paws. She needs something  _ different  _ if she’s to keep this going. No more flat chests or fuzzy hair or- fuck. No. Focus. Not on him. A second’s hesitation and her hand goes up to her breast, squeezes it as one. If she squeezes her eyes down hard enough, it may be possible to imagine it as belonging to someone else. A woman. She thinks that it should be easier.

Think,  _ think _ , she wills herself. She doesn’t watch television anymore, has never had the patience for films. Her uni dorm bed had had magazines underneath the mattress. She brings them back into her head. The way that they had made her feel.

Nineteen and tingling with nervous energy as she plucked the first one from the top shelf of the newsagents. Without heels, she’d had to climb to reach. Shaking, she almost sprinted the fifteen minutes home, shiny black package hidden in the front of her jumper.

Every image had sent her through a cycle, from shock to intrigue to…  _ well _ . She could remember everyone, their open legs and long straight hair and eyes that bound you into place. It was a wonder that she hadn’t given herself RSI, the number of nights that she must have spent pouring over them, the stress of whatever assignment gone whilst she threw herself into ecstasy, face in the pillows to muffle the hissing of gritted teeth.

They had served their purpose, done it well. She remembers those magazines with fondness. Yet, she doesn’t entertain the idea of buying one now. She’s older, wiser, and with indefinitely too many qualms of feminism or exploitation for the girls they depict to enjoy their bodies now. 

Then, there are celebrities, she supposes: Angelina Jolie, Ellen DeGeneres, Kristen Stewart. But there is always something wrong: all too thin, too like herself, too bloody young.

Her nipple is squashed mercilessly between finger and thumb and the pain causes a blip between her legs.  _ She can do this… She can do this _ .

Roxanna takes a deep breath. Her mind slows. An image is coming, but it needs time. If the woman she needed didn’t exist, then she’d just have to make her own.

Blonde hair, definitely. Longer than her own and certainly better kept. It falls as one wave, a soft curl curving around an elegant ear. It’d slip through her fingers like water. The scalp underneath it is hot. She imagines her hand, palm flat and open to curve of this almond shaped head, then the tug of fingers, a flick of the wrist. Her nameless woman moans, eyes closed and red mouth open.

Her own hand cups herself. One gentle squeeze and her hips roll against it, as though they belongs to another person. Maybe that was it, she just has to pretend to be someone else, someone who does this, someone who is able to think about someone other than her dead husband because  _ Jesus _ , it’s been so long and she needs to-

Without her, the fantasy drags on. You see, her woman is impatient. They’re somewhere that they shouldn’t be. A lab- no. Not the Keller office, either.

She wets her lips. The answer hits her with an wave of heat on her hand. The CEO’s office. Short nails dig into her shoulder as they push her back, down, onto the hardness of a dark wood desk. Polish and perfume tints the air that she grapples for in short gasps.  _ It’s okay _ , the softness of an imaginary voice allows her eyes to remain closed. She strokes her own cheek and feels the fingers between her legs slip up and down with ease.  _ Darling,  _ the sound dropped deeper,  _ just hold on to me _ .

Hold onto it, she does, replaying that phrase over and over until the words dissolve into meaningless sounds. Two fingers of her hand form a ‘V’. She doesn’t waste time in going to where she is sensitive, pushing and squeezing.  _ Darling. Darling. Darling _ .

With the sound of heavy breathing pulsing in her ears, Roxanna feels the tingling of hair between her thighs. It would feel like silk sheets and electricity and the heat of breath. She squeezes her thigh and lets herself gasp. Nips of teeth. In reward for the pain, she is gifted a kiss in red lipstick. A field of poppies blooming around pinky brown bruises.

Maybe this woman likes her bound. Those short nails would dig into her wrists as they push them back, behind her head,  _ These, I assure you, can stay exactly where they are.  _ A stern glare would be enough to freeze her in place, but her mind wanders towards to idea of more. silk scarves like ropeburn. Handcuffs that slice fine circles the circumference of her wrist. 

God only knows what’s coming out of her mouth because here, she learns that she is not above begging. Please, and Yes, and Fuck and a half dozen more horrible, horrible words thrown out of a stuttering throat without second thought. It’s a first kiss and standing on a clifftop all at the same time. Her fingers sink in and it’s with a great rush of heat that, finally, she falls.

Her made-up lover is slashed like tissue paper and the remnants of her melt away. 

Reality comes in at the edges.

No desk or polish or perfume. Roxanna hears her own, singular breathing and feels foolish, feels small. Her hand shrugs out from her jeans, warm and sticky.

Her body shudders, stops and starts. The muscles remember their existence. In memory, this part had always felt cleansing: the best kind of heavy. Now, it ties her down to her mattress. She couldn’t walk on those legs anyway.

Sluggishly, she kicks her jeans all the way off, feeling slightly guilty at the idea of having not bothered to even undress herself properly. This is where she should shower, go to the loo at the very least, but bloody hell, she’s  _ tired _ . She rolls over, leaving the pile of jeans where lay crumbled next to the damp spot in her double bed. No one is there to complain.

Besides, after thirty years of marriage, one gets rather fond of their own side of the bed.

With a small smile, she remembers  _ before _ . Silly little things like who slept where, or who signed their name first in Christmas cards. Look beyond the mess and she could trace a web of memories around that bed. When he’d put two cups of tea by the bedside, arguing that if it were cold when they were done, then he would be far too happy to worry about a silly thing like cold tea. How he wore thick woolly socks to bed, even in Summer. How many nights she’d curled around him to the backdrop of snoring and nonsense he spoke in his sleep.

And after sex, she would kiss him on the mouth, let the fatigue roll over her with his lips dot-to-dot on her face. Eventually, somewhere ticklish would be found and she would giggle, sated and exhausted and so, so smug to just be in love.

Today, a firm feather pillow makes a passable substitute. Arms and legs wraparound its body, she closes her eyes.

Sleep comes to her like a blessing. She dreams of a woman with long blonde hair and soft eyes, air she can breathe and the lingering feeling that this is all going to be okay.

 


End file.
